Athens: Sunny with a chance of.......Riot?

After finally catching a ferry from Bodrum, Turkey, we managed to get to the Greek island of Kos, and then on to another island, Kalymnos. A big tourist destination in the summer, Kalymnos is well known for it's fantastic sport climbing on tough limestone tufa. We spent a couple of days climbing (with great weather) and exploring the picturesque island. We were in for a long ferry crossing to Athens, and then on to Italy.

Yesterday evening though, as we sat down to a well deserved drink at Fatolitis Bar in Masouri, Kalymnos, our plans to sail to Athens suddenly seemed quite questionable. On the TV above us, there were scenes of mass protest and chaos. Protestors wearing motorcycle helmets were waving banners, and throwing all kinds of objects amid clouds of tear gas. Police, in full riot gear, were taking billy clubs to the protestors and trying to break up the violence. Fires seemed to have been set all along the roadsides, in what we later determined to be Athens.

"This," said the owner/bartender Sakis, "iz no good. Theez tomorrow ......is finished." He made a "finished" motion with his hands. Hmmmm, those protestors sure didn't look like they were going to just pack up and go home. "What's going on?" we asked. We had seen peaceful looking protests on TV for the past couple of days, but there was no internet connection in Masouri, let alone newspapers in English. We had to rely on our non-existent Greek, and Sakis limited English. "Theez," he said, "theez iz, you know, November 17." Yes, we knew it was Nov 17. "Theez iz....... you know, 1973......you know." Hmmmm, an anniversary of some type? We didn't really know, although I seemed to remember reading something about November in our guidebook. "Well, " said Chris optimistically, " we can go to the U.S. Embassy when we get there, if we need to." Somehow that didn't feel reassuring.

And for good reason. According to the Lonely Planet Greece guidebook, on Nov 17, 1973 Greek military tanks stormed a sit-in at Athens Polytechnic, killing at least 20 people. In recent years, Nov 17 has been the name of a "shadowy left-wing" "urban guerrilla group," which bombed the US Embassy in Athens in 1998. "Chris," I said warily, "I think we'll be going to your Embassy."

But, strangely enough, the bartender Sakis seems to be correct. The violence, for now, has "finished." As we rode through Athens this morning, via taxi, there didn't seem to be any signs of unrest. Just lots of people out with their kids, enjoying the sunny weekend. True, most of the violence seems to have centered around the residence of the Prime Minister, and the US Embassy- not Syntagma- where we are staying. But had we not seen the images on TV the night before, we would have never known there was a problem. There doesn't seem to be much coverage of the violence in the British or American media. This article from the LA Times was the best we could find http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-greece-protest,1,3464754.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true